All day I have been aching for bed.  And now it is time and I can not go because there is something in me that needs to come out.  It has been burning in me for weeks, something I've been needing to say.  I just wasn't sure what it was.

I'm still not really, but I'm getting there.

There is a book that I read in high school, it is called The Secret Life of Bees.  There is a character in the book I identified with in a way that shook me.  She had a wall in her back yard where she tucked pieces of paper into cracks, her own sort of wailing wall.  Recently it was made into a movie and it is a movie I will only watch once.  And that part of the movie felt like kinship, a deep understanding.

Christmas was not as sparkly this year.  My cousins are growing and the magic is leaving for them.  My grandfather had a loose ends talk with his daughters the day before.  And my brother got off the plane so sad, sadder than I have ever seen him.  But Christmas was raw and real and I have never needed Jesus so desperately.

I did a lot of thinking.  Sometimes I feel like I could go whole days with out moving from one spot, I could go whole days with my thoughts.  I thought a lot about pain and loss and trust.  I thought and thought and thought.  And when I think, I think to Him in a sort of scattered, slow prayer.

People seem so tired lately.  I'm tired.  And the stumbling, it's happening everywhere.  The crashing and falling and breaking.  Why the breaking?  I am far away.  I feel it inside. 

My brother called me before he got on the plane.  He called and said something that echoed in my spirit.  I don't understand.  God was in the whole thing, I really tried to do it right this time and I thought it was of Him.  This doesn't seem like the right reward, like the way it is supposed to end.  It wasn't supposed to end.

Part of me stirred with those words, part of me wanted to yell out with him.  Yeah, yeah you're right.  It doesn't make sense, no sense at all.  It isn't right.

But those thoughts, they're too easy, too natural.  Because our reward- it's the narrow path.  It's sharing in the suffering of Christ and dying daily.  That's our reward and it is glory.  Why so surprised?  Why, Tasha?  You knew in the beginning, you know even better now. 

People are stumbling but we are stronger after we break.  We're being refined and grown and shaped.  And the important part, the part that we don't see because it is too hard to see anything but ourselves- it is His Kingdom.  Here.  Now.  And it is this great hope: that we are children of The King.  And that He is a King who rights everything, who redeems this wrecked people.  And who loves us enough to mend us. 

And even though some days He feels so distant that I feel blind and terribly alone, I can not question Him.  I belong to Him and it is good to belong to Him.